Hateful Ads

Banned In

Um Paper

Decision Comes 2 Weeks

After Holocaust Dispute

If it's hateful or misleading, it's not getting printed in the University of Miami's student newspaper.

That was the decision handed down recently by UM's Board of Trustees and President Edward "Tad" Foote, regarding advertisements in the Miami Hurricane.

The decision, which came about two weeks after the Hurricane published a controversial ad questioning whether the Holocaust happened, was made at a retreat last weekend in Boca Raton when Board of Trustees Chairman Charles Cobb and Foote agreed the Hurricane should no longer accept ads that are "hateful or misleading."

The Hurricane's advertising policy formerly called for accepting any ad, except those that supported the use of guns or alcohol, Hurricane business manager Julio Fernandez said.

School officials said students still will have the final say on which ads to publish.

But Nancy Jones, a spokeswoman for the Newspaper Association of America, said the university is overstepping its bounds.

"Our position is that governments or any other bodies should never tell a newspaper what advertising it should or should not accept," Jones said. "Advertising is considered commercial speech and it seems this university is interfering in the commercial speech of its newspaper."

The decision to clamp down on the paper's policy for ads comes on the heels of the anger and controversy sparked in the community when the Hurricane published a quarter-page ad authored by Holocaust revisionist Bradley R. Smith of California.

The ad enraged several people who let their feelings be known to UM's administration and the Hurricane staff. The outrage included protests and a slew of telephone calls to UM by benefactors who threatened to cancel promised donations.

"Our decision had nothing to do with any threats that the university may have received regarding pledges," Foote said. "The idea of people pulling pledges was never mentioned in our meeting. It was the hurt feelings and the people who were offended by the ad that prompted our decision."

Foote said a committee would study the Hurricane's ad policy over the summer and propose a new, more stringent set of rules that would kick in this fall.

Fernandez, who was among the editors who ran the Holocaust ad so that students would be exposed to a different point of view, said he welcomed a review of the Hurricane's ad policy as long as student journalists had a voice in the policy-changing process.

Board of Trustees Chairman Cobb said the Hurricane staff would be the ones to decide what ads are placed in the paper under the new policy.

"I think the Board of Trustees are simply looking to revise the policies," said Fernandez, a senior at UM. "That can only be healthy as long as the paper's business editor and the students have input in what goes into the paper."